Are you new to video creation, and losing a lot of time in the editing step?
As someone who started making videos not long ago, I know how time-consuming, difficult and sometimes irritating the post-production work can be.
But with the right equipment and a little organization beforehand, you can significantly speed up your editing productivity. We give you our best tips to go faster in your post-production work.
What are the different steps of a post-production workflow?
The post-production step follows the writing, the shooting of the video and the creation of the different raw contents (image, audio…). It involves assembling all the files into a single result, which involves cutting, image correction, sounds, animations and video effects. That's why it's such a complex step: it's all about having a consistent view of your video's flow through time, without getting lost in all the details.
Here is the optimal post-production order to go through this step as quickly as possible without losing track of your work:
1# Transferring your media files
First step, move your files from your camera to an external hard drive or to your computer. Depending on the size and format of your images, this can take quite some time. That's why we advise you to proceed to the second step while removing your files.
2# Logging your video files
Quick editing means good organization beforehand. Titles, labels and markers allow you to find your way through your files. For example, you can sort your files in folders according to the scene or shot number and then name them in chronological order.
Even better: you might add markers as soon as you start shooting, to remind you of the best sequences you want to keep.
3# Making a Rough Cut
This so-called "Rough Cut" is actually the first edit that outlines the structure and vision of your video.
As soon as you access the interface of your video editor, you should add all your files in chronological order. This way you can quickly filter the sequences you want to keep and cut your videos in the right place.
4# Editing Sound, Music and Voice-over
Once you have put together your videos in chronological order, it's time to add the sound and music. This will give you a concrete vision of the audio/visual experience you want to bring to your audience. It will also make you think about whether you need to add a voice-over or a narrative voice to further dramatize your footage.
5# Adding Animations, Texts, Visual Effects
After the work on the sound comes the work on your pictures. Adding images, texts and for more advanced video projects FX effects can directly improve the visual impact of your videos. This is essential to keep the attention of your audience and improve the memorization of your message.
To do this, you can play with the multi-layer sequences in your video editor to add media in parallel. This is also where you add dynamic cuts and zooms to make your videos more fluid.
6# Making Color Correction and Deep Sound Editing
If you want a high quality video rendering, then this step is a must. It's all about applying and optimizing the color and light filters in your videos for a high-end aesthetic.
This is often overlooked, but it also applies to editing your sound. A good mic doesn't necessarily make for good sound, depending on the resonance, tone and smoothness of your voice, and the presence of background noise.
That's why studios and production agencies hire sound engineers to fine-tune the audio and deliver the best experience. This is certainly a factor to consider.
7# Finalizing your Master Edit
When you have all the elements on your video, you can then finalize the making of your video. This is where a lot of proofreading is needed, especially from an outside audience to get a clear view of your creation.
For example, some sequences may seem softer or may have some mistakes. You can make the final adjustments and cuts to have a perfect and really engaging rendering.
How to speed up your post-production workflow : 6 tips
Now that you know how to order your post-production workflow, here are 6 tips to speed up your video editing even more:
1# Making Early Editing
When shooting far away from your editing location, it's good to have a preview of the scenes you've already shot. This way, you can see if you need to make any adjustments, and you can adapt the rest of your shoot.
Professional directors and editors, for example, are often used to getting a perspective on the footage they have shot at the end of the day or on the set. For a less advanced video creator, it can be interesting to check the relevance of his live shoot. Hence, the importance of collaboration and remote video editing solutions or online video editing solutions.
2# Ensuring Consistent Shots
It's a common truth that a good shoot makes a good edit. The more you properly plan the set design, style and shots of your video in advance, the less time you'll waste filtering and selecting footage. By clearly laying out the script, structure and artistic vision behind your shoot, you are sure to have more consistency in your footage and therefore make choices more easily during your edit.
However, make sure you always have some extra footage to avoid having to reshoot if you lose a sequence or if you don't like it anymore.
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3# Sorting and Labeling your Video Files
We've already explained this, but sorting and naming your files properly saves you time. That's pretty obvious, but what's less obvious is using the tagging features in your camera or mobile application. By placing markers on your footage during your shoot, you can immediately find the scenes that interest you. And that's really, really useful !
4# Compressing and Transcoding your Video Files
In general, video production is very resource intensive for our computers. Video files are heavy and take time to transfer from one tool or solution to another. By compressing and converting RAW, MP4, JPEG, MOV files from the start, less time is lost.
One of the best solutions is to get proxy video files of these files, like in Premiere Pro, so you can manipulate and edit them in record time.
5# Having Reliable and Powerful Gears
Similarly, having powerful hardware (an SSD and a suitable graphics card), allows you to do video editing, color editing, audio mixing and graphic design in parallel without any problems.
You can work on different aspects of the project simultaneously without losing time, while keeping an overview. If you want to make quality videos, this is a necessary investment.
6# Using a Double Timeline (Pancake editing)
Still a feature reserved for Adobe Premiere Pro (although Da Vinci Resolve is also getting into it), double timeline video editing allows you to manage your editing interface more easily. You have an additional timeline that groups the files of your choice to simultaneously optimize your main editing timeline.
This way you can test layouts and trims without having to delete everything every time. Just drag the most effective video clips to your main editing line.
Boosting your subtitle workflow: Checksub
There's one more element of post-production that is often overlooked: subtitling. Often relegated to an outside service provider (agency or freelance), it is nevertheless essential to translate your video and expand your audience to the public.
In fact, it's a task that can easily be integrated into your editing process. For example, video editing solutions like Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or Vegas Pro allow you to insert subtitle files (SRT, Web VTT) that you can add to your video file.
But if you don't want subtitles embedded in your video, you can also turn to automatic subtitling solutions like Checksub. We boast of being one of the fastest tools for generating subtitles, and not for nothing. Our solution allows you to:
- Automatically and accurately transcribe your videos (advanced speech recognition API)
- Collaborate with professional captioners and translators to manage your video project.
- Translate your video into more than 128 languages (deep learning-based translation).
- Easily edit and customize the appearance of your subtitles.
We'll let you test it all out. And if not, we hope we've helped you manage your post-production at lightning speed!
